Just a wild guess, but I suspect most of Australia’s drought afflicted farmers would prefer the $2 billion was spent on hurrying a slow moving CSIRO recommended scheme to provide water security, by capturing reliable wet season tropical floodwaters instead of letting them drain into the sea.

There’s not much point having more efficient climate friendly refrigeration equipment if you have nothing to put into the fridge.

Why not not just stop all coal exports? Certainly that would have a larger impact wouldn’t it?
Australia is one of the best examples of virtue signaling I can think of. What an enormous waste of taxpayer money.

Look at the face of that slime ball, you expect anything but hypocrisy ?? He’s a politician.

At least he is investing in Australia, not giving it the Green Slush Fund at the UN. Shame that he could not find some useful infrastructure to spend it on instead of making folks throw away perfectly serviceable fridges.

Yep. Politics is the art of doing really, really stupid things that are sold as great accomplishments. Maybe after this election Morrison can pledge a trillion or so to build that high speed pedestrian trans-Pacific walk way joining Australia to Asia and the Americas. Then, for his next election, a pledge to join Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas. Then, for his final campaign, pledge to build one from Sidney to Mare Tranquillitatis so he can be buried in Tranquility – imagine the funeral procession for that and the monument they’ll build.

Once stripped rape is inevitable and helpless earth will be injected with CO2, fracking water, and nuclear waste. The subsequent birthing should be wondrous and horrible to behold. Time to mount my legions on their dragons and venture boldly forth to battle with the dark lords.

Jim: Australia is the number one coal exporting country on the planet. Why not not just stop all coal exports? Certainly that would have a larger impact wouldn’t it? Australia is one of the best examples of virtue signaling I can think of. What an enormous waste of taxpayer money.
—

One of many reasons I refuse to vote for any politician in Australia, Local, State or Federal, they’re all beyond the pale, all treacherous, all duplicitous, all a public enemy. The entire political and media landscape within the country is clearly mentally-ill. The remedy appears to be a formal separation of politics and media, no talking-heads, no media conferences, no party-political lobbying, no “question time”, no direct party to media interaction, no ‘meet the press’, no former politicians working in cushy media jobs, no more election campaigns, no more grandstanding international or intra-national conferences, just govt and opposition public reports for evaluation of policies and figures, by anyone who wants to know about it.

Then, maybe, I’d begin to vote again. Sans that level of separation, none of them are worth my spit (i.e. I expect I’ll not be voting again within my life time).

If there was a mass abstention then they would take notice as it would undermine their claim to authority. It is the same in the UK – there is no choice for a conservative so the best thing is not to vote. But the majority think you should vote for somebody and that just lets the lack of real democracy persist. And don’t think they haven’t already noticed. There have been plenty of ideas to increase voter turnout in the UK, especially online voting and letting children vote. The EU are not happy that less than 50% vote in their elections so waste the people’s money on propaganda to increase voting. If the UK referendum showed anything it was that given a meaningful vote the people will – I even enrolled to vote.

UKIP policy is to restore cheapest available most reliable energy supply. If enough people vote for us we will make it happen. We will also introduce a merit based Australian style immigration system (like they had in the past as I assume this has gone the same way as the energy system!)

LdB February 24, 2019 at 10:20 pm
WOW makes perfect sense you are really hurting us by not voting, please stick to your word 🙂
—

I don’t care how it appears to you, or its outcome, it’s the ethical thing to do, at this point.

I also have no intention of encouraging politicians and media further. This is my actual ‘vote’, to reject the entire schnozzle as democratically unacceptable to this citizen.

I don’t care who gets into govt any more, or what thy say in the media, because I can plainly see that voting is ineffectual with respect to obtaining sensible, reasonable, rational and worthwhile outcomes from any political chamber or any political ‘leader’.

Until that fundamentally changes I will not be supporting this ‘Democratic process’, or what it produces. It has failed.

I wish it wasn’t. If it were optional, all the mindless voters who opt for the left, cuz sumbudy told them they will look after them, wouldn’t bother to front. The noxious left would be stripped bare of votes and no longer continue to bring the country down.

What’s so surprising about that? Our P.M. Justin Trudeau is pushing the West Coast pipeline and a carbon tax at the same time. By their actions, these politicians are demonstrating the absurdity of trying to eliminate fossil fuels while maintaining today’s living standards and feeding the earths billions.

Yes, tell me again how a carbon tax will lower temperatures then tell me why a Canadian would want to lower temperatures. Now tell me why the ice has not melted in spite of all the best wizards predicting its demise.
Canadian governments have done their best to kill exports of fossil fuel while pretending to support trans-mountain to perhaps salvage a few votes.
It seem to me that Canada is consuming its own arm to assuage its hunger.

The unions fees provide a large slice of funding for the Labor party in Australia. There are still a lot of jobs, and union membership fees, in coal mining. The CFMEU has warned the Labor leadership to pull their heads in over opposition to new coal mines:

The CFMEU has joined forces with big miners to accuse the Queensland Labor government of treating Indian company Adani differently in their approvals for the controversial $2 billion Carmichael mine, saying it could threaten a future $77 billion pipeline of resources projects in the state.

Although Australian Labor is getting closer to green ideology as well as union super funds heavily invested in subsidy farms, they would not stand a chance at the polls without good union support. It is rare for unions and business leaders to be fighting the same cause.

There is very little distinction between the two major political parties in Australia on Climate Policy. Both sides view that it is political suicide to have a vocal stand against the widely held belief in CAGW. The only thing that trumps CAGW is the hip pocket but I expect around 80% of the population believe that ambient intermittent power generators lower the cost of electricity.

The conservative Australian ‘Liberal-National Party Coalition’ Government are badly conflicted. This results in hypocritical policy and misdirected expenditure of limited resources.

Well over half of them do not believe in ‘anthropogenic climate change’ or have valid doubts.

However the IPCC and its scare campaign have been extraordinarily successful, with the enthusiastic assistance of a biased media and organisations with a snout in the climate change financial trough.

This has resulted in a substantial portion of the population now believing it to be true.

All despite the lack of any empirical evidence that this hypothesis is correct and absolutely overwhelming evidence that it is not.

This has resulted, amongst other things, in increased electricity prices and reduced reliability, diminishing our international competitiveness and standard of living.

Our politicians, if they want to be re-elected, now believe they have no option but to cater to this influential group by publicly accepting this dogma and introducing various policies to meet our “Paris Agreement” commitments.

This is an unsatisfactory, unacceptable situation but a very difficult one to resolve, especially in the short-term.

Evidence-based decision making has been replaced by populism, emotion, manipulation of data, selective use of the facts, suppression of public (or any) debate, etc., all in contravention of the ‘scientific method’. This can only lead to very unfortunate sub-optimal outcomes.

One solution to help overcome this impasse would be for the government to set a high level, independent, Inquiry into the matter inviting submissions from both sides of the dispute, so that the so far hidden (from the public) scientific facts and evidence can be exposed and a clear conclusion arrived at.

Government could then introduce more appropriate policy based on this evidence and more effectively address the many real problems we face. We would all benefit.

Our PM thinks that making this offering to the Climate Change Gods will somehow win him the coming election in May. All it has done is lose him 20% of the Liberal Party (Republican) vote. He was never going to attract the Labor Party (Democrat) base. Swing voters want to know what he is going to give them.

All up his party faces annihilation in May 2019. 3 months from now. The new PM, Bill Shorten, is not a person to be trusted on MANY levels.

Untill we can find a “leader” Australia will flip flop from wanabe to hasbeen. As Australia is a VERY rich country it will take many years to destroy our economy.

We continue to raise the internal price of energy to “save” the planet from CO2. Blackouts from increased reliance on solar panels and windmills will become a voter issue.

Meanwhile an Australian has discovered an inexpensive means of separating volatiles (hydrocarbons) from coal. This can extend the source of fossil fuels 2,800 years at the current 100 Mbarrels/day use rate.

So there is hope in Oz. We may long remain the richest country on Earth. We may even be able to afford socialism so long as no socialist ever runs anything. The only real problem we have is the silly Paris Agreement.

Sadly our PM, and the Liberal Party have lost the plot. PS: for Americans, Australia’s Liberal Party is a conservative party. Well, I use that term lightly because it demonstrates regularly that it is anything but.

If the Aussies were honestly concerned about carbon emissions causing Climate Change and threatening life on Earth, and honest with themselves, they would shut down their coal mines and stop exporting hundreds of Millions of tons of coal to China, where China burns that coal for steel making and thermal coal-fired electrical generation.
But the Aussies are big on virtue signalling, not on real moves to prove their pretended virtues.

I think we export more coking coal for steel manufacture than for power generation. I remember a greeny on TV stating we need to make steel from more sustainable resources when told this, as anthony would say “the stupid, it burns brighter than the sun”

IMHO, China is doing Australia a favor by stopping Oz’ coal shipments to China – Aussies can now bask more comfortably in their pretended moral superiority as they move to shut down their coal-fired electrical generation plants and pretend that they are Combating Global Warming and Saving All Life On Earth.
Surely, this will add to the warm, cozy feeling of Aussies during winter night electrical blackouts when wind and solar generation fail to provide enough power to keep the lights on.
/sarc.

I can’t see the will to protest like that in the AU culture. More likely we will continue to ”take it”
I hope I’m wrong but I remember the outrageous smart meter fiasco in Victoria and most people just swallowed the whole rotten deal. (not me)

Al you got it in one the vast majority of Australians aren’t concerned about carbon emissions, a significant number are worried about Climate Change. Those two things are not the same, the later doesn’t care what is causing the change (man or nature) .

Most Australians who care about climate change are pragmatic there is little interest in doing heavy emission reduction unless the rest of the world does. They don’t want to lead from the front at significant cost for what is likely to be a futile effort.

As an indication greens party only runs at around 8.7% in 2016 down from a high of 13% in 2010.
Figure is on the right half way down the page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Greens)
The Greens are the only party with a significant climate action plan and until they start getting over 20-25% of the vote the issue is dead in the water.

IMHO, China is doing Australia a favor by stopping Oz’ coal shipments to China – Aussies can now bask more comfortably in their pretended moral superiority as they move to shut down their coal-fired electrical generation plants and pretend that they are Combating Global Warming and Saving All Life On Earth.
Surely, this will add to the warm, cozy feeling of Aussies during winter night electrical blackouts when wind and solar generation fail to provide enough power to keep the lights on.
/sarc.

Morrison’s party (the conservative Liberal Party) has almost zero chance of winning the May election. MSM propaganda has brainwashed many formerly “conservative” women to believe that “intelligent” women know that climate change is real and conservatives are anti-women.
This is a desperate attempt to win back some of those suburban women’s vote.
It’s too late for Australia – we’re finished.

not so fast mate;-)
Im one of the more intelligent women who see it for the crap it is and have been making damned sure all my female friends got eddykated;-) on WUWT and other places to wake em up
scomo might be a dip but hes a handsdown winner over shortarse and greentards
rural areas arent so daft and are strongly lib/nats so we may well be where the power lies.
I reckon its time i made a phone call to scomos office and got mates to do the same.

Nice one Cynthia. Ian has a lot of experience dealing with religious fundies. I recall a TV program he did years ago in Turkey with this guy who was a true believer in a remnant of Noah’s Ark being present today on Mt Ararat. What this fundie guy was calling a petrified structure of the Ark, Ian pointed out was just an igneous dike swarm. But of course fact is and was no obstacle for said fundie to still believe it was really Noah’s Ark anyway. You don’t win against religion because facts are anything you want them to be.

Basically, the rejection of facts is the act of a desperate mind, desperate to believe, and they can not be made desperate to want to understand a fact instead. Religion IMHO is a state of deep desperation that can not be talked back to reason. Until they abandon their useless sense of religious desperation, they can not accept facts easily, simply and openly, there’s always an escape-clause stored away in the “belief draw” of their mental filing cabinet.

Both Political parties her e in Australia are paying “Lip service” to the matter of “Climate Change.

For examples Shorten of the ALP is well aware that if his followers want coal exports stopped, then Australia would be back to at least the 1950 tees, where we depended on the UK buying all of our meat and wool.

Then of course the UK joined the EU, back then that was just a economic union, not the dictatorship that it later became.

Back then we even had a restriction on the export of iron ore, until we found unlimited iron ore in Western Australia.

Now compared to say 1950 tees Europe Australia was self supporting, but it was a bare living compared to today.

The population has no idea of what the 19550 tees or before was like, so in blissful ignorance has gone into a kind of socialist “Dreamtime” If only the World was like this or that.

I think that as the Western World has to a major extent stopped in believing in a 2000 year old Jewish faith, it is looking for a new belief system, and right now its to be Green, and to replace “Sin” we now have To save the Planet””.

To be fair to Scott Morrison, his proposal is a thousand times less damaging to the economy than the Opposition Leader’s Mean Green ‘Slash and Burn’ of the Australian Economy. Both Political Parties think that pandering to Global Warming will garner them the votes of the army of ignoramuses that think Global Warming is a scientific idea not just propaganda. What Australians do notice is when governments start to hit their wallets. Then the pitchforks come out.

Lets not go over the top with reactions the vast use of the fund monies is to give financial incentives to businesses, landowners and others who reduce carbon emissions through projects such as planting trees, installing more efficient appliances or managing bushfires.

So it is a least doing so good, the money isn’t being used to build renewables power etc.

so back in the fake ozone scare the world threw out perfectly good fridges aircons car aircon units etc
for ZERO real worth
the gas in most didnt get retained so the waste of metals time money was futile
throwing out a good reliable older fridge for a paperthin firebomb sealed back modern designed to fail and no repairs unit is utter madness.
guess I will have some absolute bargain older appliances coming my way;-)

What an idiot.
See ya Scott . . . can’t please both sides; you’ll please neither.
By the way this is all about Josh who wants his job and is busily setting-up his future as forthcoming Aussie PM.
Josh Fridenberg is Malcolm Turnbull II.
Remember that ‘Malcolm II’.

What an idiot.
See ya Scott.
You can’t please both sides on climate change; you’ll please neither.
By the way this is all about Josh who wants his job and is setting-up his future as Aussie PM.
Josh Fridenberg is Malcolm Turnbull II.
Remember that ‘Malcolm II’.

Plimer’s latest book outlines that Australia exports competitively-priced huge amounts of coal, uranium and natgas to Asia.
Then, forces Oz businesses to use expensive and unreliable solar and wind energy it its production.
Asia sell loss priced goods to Australia.
Weird
Business has to learn from its mistakes.
Authoritarian governments dream up the big blunders and then can’t quit.
Until a popular uprising gets underway.

Australia appears to be afflicted with the Bad Prime Minister disease. What is it about the system down there that allows PMs to be turfed out in palace coups by even worse people than before. There’s a succession of them. Ar least the Terrible Turncoat has gone but is this guy much better?

Robert it’s primarily climate change politics.
No other issue has taken so many political scalps in history.
The last four PMs were exterminated by it:
Carbon Pricing Scheme (CPS); Gillard
Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS); Rudd
Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF); Abbott
Renewable Energy Target (RET); Turnbull
Forthcoming . . .
Climate Solutions Fund (CSF); Morrison
Bla Bla Carbon Trading Scheme; Shorten
All complete morons with no idea of reality at the consumer level (particularly business).
Unfortunately in Australia, many businesses are operated by left-wing socialists and they are the ones who have the Governments’ ear.
So they’ll foolishly continue to play both sides and they’ll all be taken directly to the guillotine.
Abbott is not exempt because he should have vigorously challenged the UN and socialist scientists that infest every department and university in our fair land.
Morrison will suffer the same fate and quickly thereafter Shorten and thereafter Fridenberg will be executed in a like manner.
How come a guy like Trump can see the forest for the trees and these morons can’t even find the beginning of the road.

I realised whatever so called party was in power..
is NOT the holder of anything much at all
until we also THROW OUT ALL the seatwarming bureacrats paperpushers who are the ones really running the show…nothings going to change
elections need to not only make the party leaders get their act together
but all public service jobs should be up for renewals at the same time.

As regards virtue signalling, Australians are nowhere near the level attained by the Synod of the Church of England who is disinvesting their pension fund from fossil fuels unless producers “conform to the Paris Agreement”. Eh? Eh? Did they ask their pensioners?

Under the 2 party preferred system (instituted when the PM was a traitor to the party- a mole) where our vote is deemed informal if we do not direct preferences to the 2 established parties. The policies of these 2 major parties are the same on crucial issues. Remember, the climate change agenda comes from the UN, which is a private foreign power. As it is not a sovereign nation, the Federal Government is actually NOT allowed to enter in to treaties with the UN.
What it shows is that BOTH major parties, who we are FORCED to vote for have been plugging the agenda of a foreign power that is unconstitutional to bear obedience, allegiance or adherence to. It should be the scandal of the century.
I will not be unhappy to see heads roll over the treasonous actions of BOTH parties that we are forced to vote for.
Roll on One Nation.

Personally I think it’s very clever politics and very sound policy, considering all the alarmist sentiment that has to be dealt with, including the ridiculous Paris “agreement”. This first minute of this video sets the tone:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5quKmwbbV1w

At 2:30 he points out that New Zealand will have to buy carbon credits from other countries to meet their targets. Australia will romp it in without having to.

At 3:15 he points out that Labor’s target will result in a loss of $9,000 per annum per wage earner. This compares with Hundreds for the ScoMo plan. Smart politics, but more important, not nation-crippling policy.

To summaries the political situation, the extreme left wing’s grip on the media and education system has effectively killed the democratic system downunder. Sadly, any person that stands for office and speaks out against the radical virtue signalling zealots will be turned into political excrement and pursued until the bitter end, as Tony Abbott’s plight highlights all too well.

My question is, how many of these “climate” projects are actually just ones that would or should be done anyway, since the ones mentioned do sound sensible (at least on the surface)? My impression is that a lot of “climate” stuff is gaming the climate system, so to speak.

Furthermore, increased atmospheric CO2 from whatever cause is clearly beneficial to humanity and the environment. Earth’s atmosphere is clearly CO2 deficient and continues to decline over geological time. In fact, atmospheric CO2 at this time is too low, dangerously low for the longer term survival of carbon-based life on Earth.

More Ice Ages, which are inevitable unless geo-engineering can prevent them, will cause atmospheric CO2 concentrations on Earth to decline to the point where photosynthesis slows and ultimately ceases. This would devastate the descendants of most current [terrestrial] life on Earth, which is carbon-based and to which, I suggest, we have a significant moral obligation.

Atmospheric and dissolved oceanic CO2 is the feedstock for all carbon-based life on Earth.

More CO2 is better. Within reasonable limits, a lot more CO2 is a lot better.

As a devoted fan of carbon-based life on Earth, I feel it is my duty to advocate on our behalf. To be clear, I am not prejudiced against non-carbon-based life forms, but I really do not know any of them well enough to form an opinion. They could be very nice. 🙂

Interesting that this project has had no coverage in the usual MSM Media streams, none! Nothing! For such a grand project, and all the media coverage about coal, climate change and China not wanting Australian coal, you’d think they’d be shouting from the rooftops about it. But no. Nothing!

You do understand that 500MWh corresponds to 20 minutes of storage for a 1.5GW facility? Do you suppose that the sun might not shine for more than 20 minutes sometime? (Like every night)

Exporting electricity from Australia to SE Asia? Seriously? Is that going to be some kind of massive undersea cable? What is it, about 4,500 km from Darwin to Hong Kong? How much transmission loss do you reckon? How much copper do you need to carry 1.5MW over a 4,500 km cable?

I do. But this is enough to allow the smooth ramp own of solar supply at the end of the day and may well help keep the grid up in case of line interruption etc. It also can contribute at peak demand, avoiding need to fire up an expensive fossil peaker plant. That usage has saved millions already with the SA battery plant…

A good example of fake Green thinking is the Snowy Hydro two. In theory the idea of during low power demand is to pump water back to a high point, and to then use it back down again in a time of high demand sounds good. But the real reason is that it makes the erratic renewable look better, in that Hydro can easily be increased to fill the gaps when the Sun is overcast and or the wind does not blow.

But its a 5 year business, and at a cost of about 7 billion it will never pay for itself. So its a “Feel Good” see the government is truly serious about Climate Change.

But wait, the Greens hate Hydro, reason, well they can always find some small creature that will be upset by the diggings or noise. And I don’t think that there are “Full blood” Aboriginals in the Snowy area, but no doughty they will find one. And what about burial sites, must bane some there.

The Greenies are Proto Communist , and if only the population as a whole realised this, we would cease to have this Climate Change nonsense

Finally, while the UN is not a country, it is accepted by our government to represent the worlds countries. the fact that it has largely being taken over by the browns and blacks, many being so called countries of a few hundred on an small island makes no difference, they have the numbers.

And our politicians love to prance on the Worlds stage, signing all sorts of treaties, which end up biting us back.

We should recognise that the UN is just as useless as the earlier the League of Nations, and even thought it was a white body, it was as useless. The present UN is not only useless, but via bodies such as the UN IPCC is a dangerous body.

Perhaps President Trump should withdraw the massive amount that the USA pays to the UN, until the IPCC is abolished, or at least stops telling such blatant lies about the danger the planet is in.

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